My boys and I took a 650 mile round trip to scout Isaac's limited unit in the eastern plains over Sunday and Monday. We pointed my truck east Sunday morning with plans to drive the area Sunday evening after setting up camp and maybe walk some of the area. Monday morning's plan was to listen for gobbling, drive the area again glassing, and hike a little before driving back to the mountains. The following photos of turkeys were taken from several hundred yards, so there are no close ups.
The plains just before dropping out of the mountains above Denver
We can't drive through Denver without stopping at BassPro. I bought one turkey hunting video and a pair of cheap BassPro slip on camo shoes
Eastern CO doesn't have quite the same scenery as the mountains.
About a mile before we got to the public land the highway crossed a tributary of the riverbottoms we will be hunting. I'm sure any one of these birds could end up on the SWA. There is approximately 25 hens (maybe a jake or two) and two strutters.
I spotted these two toms on the other side of the road when we turned around to take a photo of the flock. When I first spotted them they were in half strut. By the time I got turned around a second time they had decided to take it easy. These were the only relatively close photos we got and Isaac took them from the truck about 50 yards away.
We set up camp at a camp ground that had just opened for the season and were the only campers anywhere near here. I'm sure that will change in turkey season.
Looking out from camp toward the river bottom.
We were just about to get in the truck to start driving around when Isaac said........."I just heard a gobble". He knows what a bird sounds like and I've learned to trust him. In only a few seconds we all three heard them. Within a few minutes two toms came strutting into the field by camp.
Then three more toms came into the other end of the field.
The first two headed straight for the three.
They disapeared just around the trees where the three had been and the fight started. I didn't get any photos when they came out flogging one another, but the boys thought it was awesome. They had never heard or seen a group of toms fighting.
After that show we drove up the road to get a feel for the area and glass for turkeys some. Within a mile we already had more turkeys spotted. It turned out to be 8 toms chasing one another around same as the first group. These birds are obviously trying to establish dominance in the flock and getting ready to break up.
After watching the flock of eight toms chase each other around for a while we left them alone and went looking for more. A mile or so later we found two more flocks. One had 9 male birds, but they were in the weeds so I couldn't tell if they were jakes or toms. The other was a flock of 13 hens.
They were all in this region, but were several hundred yards apart.
Some of the nine.
I didn't get photos of the hens, but after driving a couple more miles we spotted these in the road.
It was getting late, so we drove back to camp and cooked some burgers and dogs over a fire after the boys tossed around a football they found. We also sat in the truck and watched a little of the turkey hunting video on the portable player before going to bed. The three of us were wedged into the little 2 man tent, but they liked it. It was probably a good thing because the temps dropped from 70+ to 40.
We got up early the next morning to listen for birds and woke up to lots of fog. We drove up the road and listened to the eight toms from the evening before. I shot a short video of the the gobbling with my still camera. There is really no video to speak of but you can hear them gobbling if you turn the sound up. I did not have my harrison's hootn' tube with me, so I used my natural voice. You can tell............I'm not a natural voice owl hooter, but the birds gobbled anyway. It did impress my boys. I have them fooled into thinking I'm a little more than your average turkey hunter. ;DDon't tell em any different.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65Yu4ms_a-YI hoped the fog would clear out, so we went back and packed up camp in hopes we could scout. The fog was just too thick, so we drove to another area to at least find the parking area and listen. We ended up seeing several pheasants. The pheasants were a treat because the boys had never seen one in the wild. We also heard a hen yelping but could not see her because visibility was 100 yards max.
This is the same field from camp that the strutters were seen.
We decided to call it a trip and point the truck west. We did make one final stop at BassPro just because we could, but I refrained from buying anything. It turned out to be a great trip and Isaac is more exited than ever about the tag. We'll see how it changes when the rest of the tag holders show up.
